MURDER, POLITICS, AND THE END OF THE JAZZ AGE
by Michael Wolraich
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White threat in a browning America; How demographic change is fracturing our politics.
By artappraiser on Mon, 07/30/2018 - 6:14pm |
URL:
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-politics-immigration
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Comments
There was nothing encouraging in the article or the accompanying podcast. A white rights rally is scheduled for D.C. on August 12th. The NYT is now offering Liberals instruction on how to talk to a racist, a sign of normalizing the abnormal.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 8:05am
What is it that you find offensive about the NYT op-ed you link to? You often argue that winning elections is the most important thing. If candidates for office and their campaigners don't talk to people like she describes in the excerpt below, how are they going to win elections? You think it's better to scream at them?
I think you didn't read it, just saw the title and the confederate flag illustration and got upset? Or if you did read it, seems to me you don't realize that you have a perfect-is-the-enemy-of-good problem, never going to win elections that way.
by artappraiser on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 3:20pm
If people want to talk nice to racists, they are free to do so. I did read the article. It was no different than articles post -election telling us how nice we should be to Trump voters. Trump support hovers between 38-42% at 538. Kidnapping children and being subservient to Putin has not changed the numbers. We can hope that there are enough Democrats and Independents who come out to the polls in the midterms to oust Republicans. The racists have found their political home. They will be out in the streets in August in D.C.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 3:35pm
I guess you didn't read my news post re: Trump's actual 18% and how the press continually flubs the meaning of polling data.
by PeraclesPlease on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 4:10pm
I think the 18% represents strong Trump supporters.
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 4:22pm
Driftglass on liberals talking to the Republican base, what David Brooks, the NYT and the mainstream media will not print or suggest:
See also: Remember William Tecumseh Sherman's Famous "Let's Go Figure out What White Rural Voters Really Want" March to the Sea?
by NCD on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 5:50pm
The construct of the NYT article is ridiculous. I know Trump supporters. I never yell about racism in their faces. I ask Christian and Catholic Conservatives how they can still support Trump despite kidnapping of children. I listen to their excuse and move on. My take home message is that if Trump ever came after groups of blacks, these people would be silent. This is not a theoretical. This is reality. Muslims would probably go first. I simply don’t trust Trump supporters.
Racists May take meetings with white Liberals, but I don’t know how often white Liberals come into contact with racists. Public meetings may be an exception. It is unlikely that blacks are going to come across people who self identify as racists. There will probably be harsh verbal exchanges next month in D.C.
The NYT article is a feel good article on how white Liberals should take the moral high ground when it comes to racists. The white Liberals I come into contact with are not appeasers. They often are ready to go on the attac. I have seen them go after people at public meetings. I have zero confidence that the lady who wrote the NYT article will leave her couch when it really counts. She does talk a good game though..
by rmrd0000 on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 9:17pm
Here is how Trump supporters whipped into a frenzy by Trump at a Florida rally lashed out at the press
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/jim-acosta-anti-media-trump_us_5b61415fe4b0b15aba9dcc10
Someone is going to get hurt. These are the fellow citizens we need to apppease.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 8:16am
The economy will likely suffer another GOP collapse due to tariff shock, increasing floods of federal debt (even with the growing economy- when debt should be reduced not increased) add in the mountain of personal, student and corporate debt, the turn will be triggered or given rocket fuel by the current $1 trillion a year explosion of the deficit as the Trumpublicans loot the country with their tax cuts for the rich. Social Security, Medicare and particularly the hospitals and health care system may seize up.
Then the scapegoating, anger and denial will get even worse. Trump, like any madman demagogue, will be inflaming the easily exploited GOP Base to blame anyone but him.
And as Krugman says, these guys are the last ones to know how to, or care to do anything when it happens except to buy up property on the cheap, like they did in the GOP crash of 2008.
by NCD on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 10:03am
by artappraiser on Tue, 07/31/2018 - 11:38pm
It’s not unlike the experiences of many black people in the United States.
https://www.lennyletter.com/story/the-stress-of-being-the-only-black-woman-at-work
Blacks have to deal with the isolation on their own.Demographic change occurred when the Civil Rights movement opened up the job market and access to education. Population shifts are creating demographic change today.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 7:27am
Fine, but what was the reason Arta posted this, and does your comment have anything to do with that reason?
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 9:30am
The story is about the isolation felt by white workers in this business.
Edit to add:
She is comfortable outside the factory.
The Spanish speaking workers probably feel isolated outside factory. Both tribes separate themselves after work.
Black workers who are the first on a job experience the same tribal isolation.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 10:00am
Everybody knows a story about a white person in a factory with nearly all the employees being Latino and speaking Spanish is about black people.
by ocean-kat on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 1:24pm
The common tread is isolation. When the first Spanish speaking workers arrived at the factory, they probably felt the same isolation. The likelihood that a white worker took time to teach them English was small. When the Spanish speakers became the dominant group, they feel no urge to teach white workers Spanish. There is a clear tribal theme. When the first black workers arrived to work at previously all- white factories, there also a sense of threat among white workers. There is a language issue in this story, but there is also a story of a rapid rise in the number of nonwhites in the workplace.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 3:01pm
Do you know of a story where the first black workers didn't just speak a different language but quickly became the majority?
How about if we go to a different country to try to put the story in a new context. In England, there are plenty of people with black skin born right there in England, and they consider themselves fully English. And some of those are for Brexit because they don't like outsiders coming in and diluting or changing their culture much less becoming dominant in numbers.
And let's go to the point of Ezra Klein's article. As in like: the state of California. It is now majority Latino. Both whites and blacks are minorities there, both are shrinking.
This is what the Pennsylvania article is also trying to show. Not just tribalism, but who are minorities and this flies in the face of the white privilege meme; both articles would suggest that white privilege is in the process of dying. Stay away from preaching whether that is good or bad, but think on: it just is, it is what is happening. And eventually there will be intermarriages with the dominant Latino population. Hence "the browning of America". Not the blacking of America, nor the whiting of America.
We were always a melting pot as opposed to old world countries but there is always blowback and a time of adjustment when there is a mass influx of newcomers who also have lots of children. It was once the Irish. Today many Americans who are generations removed from immigrants both have some Irish blood and no longer worry about the Irish taking over the country.
by artappraiser on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 3:48pm
I see parallels in the example of the influx of competing labor when slaves gained freedom. Southern states established Black Codes to restrict wages and movement of black workers. The threat of labor competition resulted in restrictions on blacks. At that point in time, white laborers had enough power to prevent a low wage work force from competing. When blacks returned from the World Wars, their ability to compete in the workplace was halted by Jim Crow Laws, redlining, etc. White anxiety has always been present. However, whites had higher salaries and twice the employment rate of blacks. Once the workforce went from all white to employing blacks, white workers were displaced. The white anxiety was in place, even when numbers of black labor was small. Currently, white laborers have zero clout and businesses are likely going after cheaper labor. From that standpoint, the anxiety is higher. I think the anxiety would be high even without the language barrier. I suspect, as noted above, that the original Spanish speaking workers felt their own anxiety The difference from the past is the inability to stunt the mobility of the new group of laborers.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 4:35pm
What would bring these two groups together? Both groups are in jobs that are at high risk of being outsourced to automation. Both are going to need retraining. Whites who speak Spanish have an advantage. Spanish speakers who learn English have an advantage. Both groups are going to have to adapt and learn skills that will carry them into the future. The problem then becomes determining what skills carry you into the future.
We are tribal. Tribalism is built in. You tell a story that deserves empathy, you get met with a response from another tribe with an equally compelling story. We are tribal, you have to offer solutions that appeal across tribal barriers. We are not very good at achieving that goal. You cannot operate in a tribal vacuum.
by rmrd0000 on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 9:10pm
My own explanation is simple: it was like a "human interest story" illustration for Ezra's wonky article.
In doing so, it added a factor which I don't think his article stresses enough and which this one makes clear: the language issue. So the zero communication thing.
I was especially struck by the reporter getting input from the one Spanish-speaking girl that she came to the U.S. hoping to, looking forward to, assimilating to her new culture, but got stuck in a sort of old world ghetto by the job. A job which very clearly bends to the Spanish language of the workers because: not enough English speakers will work there at that pay.
It also made me think of my mother and her six siblings, who grew up on a farm with an illiterate immigrant mother who never learned English, while their father, who spoke rudimentary, halting English, was away working at a foundry all day. Somehow English became the primary language of all 7 kids, none of them could speak much more than a smattering of rudimentary Polish. How the hell did that happen? It was actually a miracle. Now that I think on it, it must have been helped by not just when the oldest kids were forced to learn English in grade school, but also when the oldest kids were forced to help sell produce at the farmer's market. And then they taught their younger siblings. And while the oldest made it only through sixth grade, in her empty nest years she ended up the manager of a shipping department of a big department store. The second died rather young, The middle girls all made it through high school, including my mother, the boy of course got well-assimilated in the army in WWII, and the youngest girl actually got a two-year college degree without any help from family at all. They couldn't help her do that, they didn't know how.
Then I thought of how my mother loved human interest stories, it was how she processed information. Everyone who knew her thought of her as an incredible empath as well as classic bleeding heart liberal. I think news junkies who dis this sort of story don't know how important they are to certain types of brains.
by artappraiser on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 2:56pm
These European kids selling junk on the corner can have a tightly defined working knowledge of 5 or 6 languages easy. If they could only study, or maybe they don't process that way...
by PeraclesPlease on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 3:54pm
The WaPo story could have been more useful by going more into the mechanics group of the boyfriend, they obviously had the beginnings of rudimentary communication because they were forced to by the situation.
Communication on "the line" is all social, and that makes me think of the whole Facebook thing, tribes, just not based on language, YET, that is, )as in new ones could be created, like when young twins do it so their parents don't understand).
And how much communication do we really need when our Silk Road is Amazon.com, with tariffs in place everywhere and you're only snapchatting with friends and family..I digress to excess, scuse....
by artappraiser on Wed, 08/01/2018 - 5:10pm
The WaPo article quoted a worker saying that the white boyfriend is the best mechanic at the factory. There is a complaint that the Spanish speaking mechanic, who is named in the article, is not as good. The Spanish speaking workers are said to prefer calling the Spanish speaking mechanic. The question is why the boyfriend is not called first. The Spanish speaking mechanic and the Spanish workers are not given the chance to defend themselves.
From the article
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 08/02/2018 - 8:30am
All I myself was getting at by mentioning that sub-story is that interacting with some kind of communication, even with bad initial results, is better than no communication between groups at all. It's the whole principle of free speech and diplomacy and trade, etc.: starting to communicate. Without communication, you've got nothing, no chance, except fear of "the other" and maybe wars sometimes. It's not always going to be positive, people are going to yell and disagree and haggle and argue, but they will often learn to tolerate rather than just tribalize further.
To be fair, the article did mention a bit of non-verbal communication activity with the woman, where the other women hugged her one day. Struck me that she's partly such a difficult case because she's very shy, and the author noted that. The boyfriend was a less shy person and she seemed to need, to want to lean on, someone like him to navigate the world. A lot of people who take jobs at the bottom of the food chain without a desire to get anything better are often going to be like this: followers. (As the article noted in something about talking with her rather, she liked the work well enough, it didn't bother her! Work that is often described as notoriously numbing, she was okay with that.) No matter what language or race. No "gumption" to reach out, as the old folks might call it. I happen to think that's why a universal minimum income might work out better than one would think as a lot of jobs are automated. Some people just don't have the constitution to mingle much with anyone nor reach out. It's not even always about smarts, think of hermits and Emily Dickinson types.
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/02/2018 - 1:23pm
I understand your points and the point of the story. I think one researcher in the Vox article talked about the democratization of discomfort. Other ethnic groups experienced the isolation when they were allowed to enter the workplace. Unfortunately, “firsts” are still happening. It would have been interesting to have had the perspective of the Spanish speaking workers. They are screwed if they don’t learn English. Hopefully, their children will be their teachers. White factory workers may learn Spanish from their children.
Flight of ideas here. Consider the photographer who is the first black person to shoot a Vogue cover in the magazine’s history. He was under a tremendous amount of pressure to produce. Beyoncé was the reason he was hired. It is possible that he was not welcomed with open arms by some on the Vogue staff. Many ethnic minorities have to learn to maneuver in unfriendly environments. The language barrier is present in the factory. The isolation in being “ one of only a handful” is not uncommon.
by rmrd0000 on Thu, 08/02/2018 - 1:50pm
Good points. Factories have floor supervisors and white collar people above them. The floor guy is responsible to get a job done right and efficiently. Their job is to assign personnel with tasks.
I didn't waste my time reading this as it seemed ridiculous. Supervisors do not like employees creating any kind of personnel disputes. If the supervisor is off, there is a deputy supervisor. I take it the reporter did not query a supervisor?
by NCD on Thu, 08/02/2018 - 2:12pm
the article really wasn't about that, wasn't about workplace issues, that was just a side excursion about the boyfriend. It was about socialization. The girl likes the job just fine, and all the Spanish workers have no complaints. It's that she has no one to talk to there and she'd like to have someone to chat with while she works. It's the stranger in a strange world thing (or the high school cafeteria clique thing if you like.) Meant to get across how whites are finally being subjected to that in rural areas by situations like this, and it explicitly gets into how the surrounding towns are highly segregated as to whites and immigrants. The girl is 19, and not the smartest. She's lonely, work just like to be able to chat with some pals while she works, just like a 19-yr.-old Latina Spanish-speaking immigrant might be in a 100% white English-speaking workplace. She relies heavily on the boyfriend, on seeing him at lunch. Her current solution was trying to get a job at the Home Depot in the white area, and she failed at that.
The only real workplace issue that raises it's head in the article is that when they have meetings, the supervisor doesn't even bother to do the whole thing in English, because she's the only person that doesn't understand Spanish, and the person trying to translate doesn't get it right. If they have bi-lingual laws in the state, that might be a legal issue that a 19-yr. old doesn't know or care much about. Spanish or English 19-yr.-old, they just figure they should take the situation as it is lying down. We are not talking about rocket scientists in either case.
So she really has it just like a foreigner, real isolated and that's her life. She never wanted to travel or move, it's just that her environment and people changed on her. The upside: once she gets a little older, she might see, like my 80-yr. old Irish immigrant neighbor said about a Muslim woman wearing a hijab I get a little upset but then I think, no, don't go there because she is like me 60 yrs. ago.
by artappraiser on Thu, 08/02/2018 - 3:55pm